HSBC has reported resilient retail banking earnings for the first half with adjusted profit before tax of $3.6bn, up 7% year-on-year.

Adjusted revenue of $11.1bn rose by 8% year-on-year.

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HSBC H1 retail banking highlights included:

  • The PayMe app in Hong Kong has grown customer numbers to one million users;
  • The May 2018 launch of HSBC’s Connected Money app in the UK, has attracted 100,000 downloads;
  • Over 80% of global equity sales and a significant part of HSBC’S retail sales are now made digitally, and
  • Credit card customer numbers growth includes 282,000 new customers in the UK, 221,000 in China and 135,000 in the US.

HSBC H1 UK highlights

HSBC completed the ring-fencing of its UK retail banking activities on 1 July 2018 and the transfer of its 14.5milliion customer accounts ahead of schedule.

On Brexit, HSBC Chief Financial Officer Iain Mackay told analysts: On UK uncertainty, we’re not seeing anything at this point,  it just merits appropriate diligence across the portfolios.

“But in terms of overall performance, it remains very stable. But at this point in time, there’s really nothing emerging of concern. In terms of when we’ll see higher credit costs, I hate to say this, but your guess is as good as mine.”

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Group wide, HSBC posted profit before tax up 5% compared with the first half last year.

Increased costs restricted H1 profitibility, in particular investments in technology and the cost of expanding its operations in China.

One-off H1 hits included a liability of $765m to the US Department of Justice.

HSBC maintains its 2020 target to achieve a reported return on tangible equity (RoTE) of more than 11% by the end of 2020.

In H118 HSBC posted a RoTE of 9.7%, down 20 basis points year-on-year.